Researchers have located a new tribe! People who find themselves in very tough places in life, yet they don’t just survive. They actually thrive!

Who are these folks? Maybe they’re like that woman we sing about in “Delta Dawn,” sweet but addled… “Delta Dawn, what’s that flower you’ve got on?” Or like Forest Gump with his “life is a box of chocolates”? Or maybe like one of the Sisters of Mercy carrying on Mother Teresa’s work around the world? No, this tribe are just normal folk who are sensible, awake, uncompromisingly honest. So what makes them different?

Well, let’s start with how thrivers approach life: as students and philosophers, not as patients, victims or even warriors. If thrivers are students, what are they studying? If they are philosophers, what do they philosophize about? 

Thrivers come up with new ways to view a situation they have found themselves in during difficult times. They learn to apply a new explanatory system to what happens to them, creatively disputing default ways of thinking and inventing new views of the situation. They think like philosophers, asking questions such as, “How can I make sense of this? What can now, in this circumstance, give my life meaning?” Thrivers reflect on where they find themselves at this present moment. They know absolutely that it is in their power to construe-explain, interpret, translate, define-what happens to them in life. And only in their power. (more…)

I’m about to share with you a personal email. But before I do, I’d like to talk first about plumb lines. Because this email that you will read shortly is so much more than a message I received from a friend. This email will remain forever a vertical reference line that allows me to measure the center of balance of my life on any day.

And that takes us back to plumb lines.

The dictionary tells us that the word plumb comes from the Latin word for the metal lead.) A plumb line is a string or line from which a weight is hung. (The weight is called a plumb bob.) This plumb line is suspended from above to determine or test whether something below is or isn’t vertical. Plumb lines determine the vertical on an upright surface. Think of an ancient cathedral. Probably a plumb line was centered over a mark on the floor; and, as the building proceeded upward, the plumb line would be taken higher, insuring that the building stayed straight as it grew in height. (You can still see these marks on the floor of many old buildings.)
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One thing that makes life so much more pleasant is to avoid making things more significant than they need to be. Some people are experts at reading undue importance into decisions, timing, and choices. They ask questions such as these: “Why did she decide to do X this year when last year she turned down Y which was very similar? What does this mean??”

Something I saw a few days ago in the Arts section of The New York Times gave me a fascinating reminder that assigning importance to that decision or this timing may be completely irrelevant.

The story was about Maestro Riccardo Muti. Maestro Muti had just announced that he would become the musical director of The Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This was big news in the music world. The Times put it like this: “In a classical music world of diminishing grandeur, the orchestra has hired one of the last lions of podium glamour…” Mr. Muti had been music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1980-1992. He most recently had been music director at the Teatro Alla Scala in Milan until he resigned in 2005. (more…)

Ah, the wisdom of Johnny Depp. We can imagine Johnny’s saying the words in the title above (which quotation sites do attribute to him) in one of those Pirates of the Caribbean movies where the good guys must cross big expanses of ocean to fight with the bad guys or to find a safe haven for themselves. But can’t each of us imagine calling out–“Now, bring me that horizon”—as a way of living our lives? The origin of the word horizon is from a Greek word that means bound or define and is akin to the Latin word for boundary. Dictionaries remind us that one use of the term horizon relates to the limit of a person’s mental perception, experience, or interest.When people want to “broaden their horizons,” they want to broaden their “outlook, perspective, and perception.”

What determines how far out are our individual horizons? Someone said once that we all live under the same sky, but we don’t all have the same horizon.Personally, I’m glad we don’t all have the same horizon…because I like the variety of what all of us see “out there” in front of us. I like a miscellany of perspectives and perceptions and areas of interest among the people I know, the authors I read, the commentators I listen to. (more…)

There are new movements, and then there are new movements. How about something called The Art of Living Slowly? This organization, begun in Italy by Bruno Contigiani, is spreading rapidly! (Is that a contradiction in terms?)

You can find a lot of websites that are part of the “slow movement.” I just bought a cookbook called The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen and have one called Slow Cooking: Not So Fast Food on my wish list.

There was a Slow Day—on a Monday of all days—in New York City recently, modeling itself on the World Slow Day that occurred earlier in Italy. During World Slow Day people received citations for walking too fast. Participants in a Slow Day marathon attempted to travel 656 feet without stopping, in no less than an hour and 27 minutes. People walking through the center of the city during rush hour had their speedy movement halted when someone stopped them to hand them a poem. (more…)